Has Anyone Seen this - Is it a Credible Site?

[montanacowboy]

We Had the Vaccine the Whole Time

By David Wallace-Wells

You may be surprised to learn that of the trio of long-awaited coronavirus vaccines, the most promising, Moderna’s mRNA-1273, which reported a 94.5 percent efficacy rate on November 16, had been designed by January 13. This was just two days after the genetic sequence had been made public in an act of scientific and humanitarian generosity that resulted in China’s Yong-Zhen Zhang’s being temporarily forced out of his lab. In Massachusetts, the Moderna vaccine design took all of one weekend. It was completed before China had even acknowledged that the disease could be transmitted from human to human, more than a week before the first confirmed coronavirus case in the United States. By the time the first American death was announced a month later, the vaccine had already been manufactured and shipped to the National Institutes of Health for the beginning of its Phase I clinical trial.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/12/moderna-covid-19-vaccine-design.html?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Intelligencer%20-%20December%207%2C%202020&utm_term=Subscription%20List%20-%20Daily%20Intelligencer%20%281%20Year%29

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Yes, NY Magazine is a reputable publication.

[montanacowboy]

3. So the Dump KNEW

that a vaccine was in the pipeline all the time!

[LisaL]

6. Everybody with a half a brain cell knew.

What do you think they were testing this whole time? Jeez.

[Agschmid]

2. The source is credible.

[In_The_Wind]

4. If it's true it's horrible news.

[LisaL]

7. Do people freaking not understand how this works?

Design of the vaccine isn't the hard part. The part that takes a long time is the testing of it. It goes through multiple clinical trials before FDA can approve it.
What exactly is the horrible news here?

[In_The_Wind]

11. So many people are dead now, while this was going on.

[LisaL]

15. WTF did you want done?

As soon as vaccine is designed, start giving it to people? Before you even know if it works? What if it was dangerous and had really bad side effects? What if it was completely ineffective?

[Mariana]

37. What shortcuts do you think should have been taken with the vaccines?

Would you take a vaccine that had no testing whatsoever? Would you take one that had been tested for safety but not efficacy? Would you take one that had been tested for efficacy but not safety? Please do tell us what you would have done differently.

[NutmegYankee]

35. Exactly. mRNA vaccines can be made in days, but it's not tested.

[uponit7771]

18. The article is exaggerating at LOT, the mRNA were able to be made days after the genetic sequence ..

... for CV19 came out that doesn't mean we had a trial tested vaccine

[In_The_Wind]

33. Thank you.

Been a mite distracted this month. I've been spiraling down into the rabbit hole around here.

First we got hit by a hail storm. Everyone needed new roofs.

Then my husband's car seriously needed brakes. On the way home from our mechanic it broke down. We had it towed, still waiting a call about 'why it wouldn't start'.

Repair bills are growing faster than the money is coming in.

[unblock]

21. no it's not. it actually shows how we've been able to get to a vaccine for distribution so quickly

testing for safety and effectiveness is a vital part of the process and this takes time, even if the development of the vaccine was quick.

hell, there was some early thought that some old vaccine might work, the polio vaccine, i think. we've had that for decades now. but we didn't end up using that because it was tested and found not to be particularly effective on this new virus.

in fact, we had lots of possible vaccines. many were tested. a few got the thumbs up after nearly a year while others got rejected.

going back and then saying, gee, we had this vaccine all along, well, it's just silly to characterize that as scandalous. sure, we "had" the vaccine, but it hadn't been tested yet, so it couldn't be used.

normal and unsurprising.

[LisaL]

5. This has been posted a couple of times here already.

Of course there was a vaccine the whole time. There were many vaccines the whole time. They were not tested, not approved, and therefore the vaccines being there the whole time means absolutely nothing.

[Paladin]

8. I keep expecting to not be surprised by anything, anymore.

And then something like this comes along.

[LisaL]

9. What is surprising about it?

The article, despite the nutty headline, described the normal vaccine development. You can't design the vaccine and start giving it to people right away. Vaccine goes through many rounds of testing first.
Even now we have people complaining that vaccines haven't yet been tested enough.

[Maeve]

20. Ah, it's much more exciting to be shocked!

Yes, the testing is the important part--one of the greatest tragedies of modern medicine was the thalidomide scandal of the 1950's and '60's where marketing out-paced testing. The US did not have the severity other countries faced because the FDA stood up to the pharma company pushing it here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide_scandal

We still can't judge long-term effects; science takes time.

[subterranean]

10. It rates "high" in terms of factual reporting.

That's according to this site, which is useful for checking the credibility and bias of other sites or news media:

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/new-york-magazine/

[MineralMan]

12. New York Magazine does very credible reporting.

However, those early hints of a working vaccine could not have been used in the US. The FDA has very strict requirement for vaccine testing and trials. Think about it. Even now, there are people who are skeptical of the current vaccines that have been shown to be safe and effective in extensive trials.

Back then, nobody would have been justified in making those early, untested vaccine candidates.

Fortunately for us, though, the very early recognition of the mRNA approach led to a faster vaccine development and earlier trials than we might have expected.

[LisaL]

13. This article describes a normal development of a vaccine.

Because of all the background work, design of the vaccine isn't the part that takes a long time.
Companies design several vaccine candidates then the testing begins.
There is absolutely no surprises that vaccine was designed as soon as researchers knew the sequence of the virus.
The title of the article is very misleading.

[MineralMan]

14. I read about mRNA vaccine candidates very early on.

There was news about them. Testing still had to be done, though, before any vaccine could be released. Testing started way back then. Now vaccines are almost ready for release. It all takes time, and there is no way to rush clinical trials.

[LisaL]

16. Adenovirus vaccine candidates were designed early on as well.

As long as you did background work, all you need is a sequence of the virus to insert into the backbone (whether it's RNA or adenovirus).

[MineralMan]

22. Yes. There are still additional vaccine candidates in the wings.

However, given the reported effectiveness of the three that are close to being approved for emergency use, I expect that production of those will be ramped up quickly. They are all three very effective and apparently safe.

Let's get going on creating 7 billion doses!

[LisaL]

26. All three have issues.

Pfizer needs to be stored at ultra cold temperature. Moderna needs to be stored at cold temperature.
Oxford appears to be less effective than either Moderna of Pfizer. Their 90% effectiveness number is based on a small number of people who got the half dose followed by a full dose.
All three need two doses.
So there is certainly room for trying to develop more/better vaccine candidates.

[MineralMan]

27. I have no objection to further testing and development

of other candidates. In the meantime, I'm also in favor of going full steam ahead on the ones we already have. With 7 Billion people to vaccinate, we're going to need a helluva lot of all of them.

The Pfizer one will be best suited to highly-developed industrial nations. The Moderna one can be refrigerated much more easily, so it is well suited for many other nations. Suitable refrigeration for it is globally available. The Oxford vaccine seems best suited for rural, less-developed countries, due to its simpler requirements for storage and shipment.

All three will be highly useful, so planning which ones go where will be very important. The WHO should take the lead on that, as soon as we rejoin that international body.

[LisaL]

28. Russia is starting mass vaccination with their own vaccine.

I believe it also sold it to many countries that were interested. China has already been vaccinating people with its own vaccine.

[MineralMan]

30. We know very little about those vaccines, though.

I know they are being used. Perhaps we'll get some results information from those de facto poorly controlled trials.

[LisaL]

31. Well, some posters here obviously think that you can design a vaccine and start

giving it to people right away.

[MineralMan]

32. Yes, so it seems.

Apparently that is what the Russians and Chinese are doing, at least as far as we can tell. I've seen nothing about any trials of those vaccines. Perhaps there were trials that were not disclosed. I have no idea.

Despite the gravity of this pandemic, we are learning something from it that may be extremely valuable in the future. If all of the vaccines that are designed turn out to be effective and safe, we may be able to respond more quickly to the next pandemic. The new technologies are getting a real-time test right now.

[jobendorfer]

17. an observation

There is a difference between the statement "We have a model of a candidate vaccine" and the statement "We have a vaccine that has been exhaustively tested for safety and efficacy, and which we can manufacture on a scale of billions of doses."

A really, really, big difference.

What Moderna had on January 13 was a computer model of a vaccine that *might* work and *might* not kill people.

What Moderna has today is a real, tangible, reproducible vaccine with some clinical trials that suggest that it works and that it doesn't kill people who take it.

J.

[LisaL]

25. And even that vaccine is going for an emergency approval only.

Ideally, testing would have lasted a lot longer so we knew a lot more. How long does immunity last?
We don't even know if people who get the vaccine get infected but remain asymptomatic.

[Klaralven]

19. If Covid had been more deadly, testing would have been bypassed & volume manufacturing started

Had it been a little more infectious, had the fatality rate been more like 10% and had it killed the young, all the testing would have been bypassed.

There has been a lot of work on vaccines in anticipation of worse pandemics or biological terrorism. A rapid response may be necessary.

In this case it wasn't necessary, since all you needed to do was to quarantine, trace contacts, and isolate contacts, as the Chinese have demonstrated.

[LisaL]

23. If you bypass testing, you could end up with ineffective and dangerous vaccine.

NT

[orwell]

24. That's not true...

..."all the testing would have been bypassed."

That's just not true.

[Klaralven]

29. If 100,000 a week are dying, you'd roll out whatever vaccine you could produce.

You'd keep careful records on who got it and what happened to them and assess safety and effectiveness on an ongoing basis as production ramped.

If this disease is killing younger people, a large percentage of medical staff and first responders are also dying.

[orwell]

34. That's just not true...

...they would never roll out an untested vaccine. You could actually give healthy individuals the very disease you are vaccinating them for.

Vaccines are not like "experimental" drugs or medical procedures. If someone has a very high likelihood of dying you may take the risk with a novel new drug or technique on a very limited basis to save their life.

With a vaccine however you are giving it to a healthy person. You can't take the risk of causing more harm than good. Look what happened to the botched rollout of the Polio vaccine. It actually gave some kids Polio.

Vaccines are different animals.

[SidDithers]

36. We didn't have the vaccine all along...

We had the vaccine only after it had been tested for efficacy and safety.

Prior to that we had a potential vaccine or a candidate vaccine.

Sid